Blaming video games for violence is like blaming Whack-a-Mole for an increase in animal abuse.

Sure, after you’ve given that mole a good whack, you are a little out of breath, your adrenaline may be rushing, and the thwack sound was satisfying, but you are most likely are not going to head down to Canadian Tire, buy an aluminum slugger and go to town.

Video games do not lead to violence against people.

There has been a resurgence of video game scapegoating, with the recent mass shootings in the United States and the US President saying that video games are a part of the reason for those and all mass shootings.

Companies like Walmart in the US, have taken down violent video game displays and outlets like ESPN have delayed broadcasts of video game tournaments.

A 2014 research paper by Tobias Greitemeyer and Dirk O. Mügge, from the University of Innsbruck Austria, analyzed data from 98 independent studies which contained 36,965 participants and it revealed that for both violent video games and games designated pro-social, there was a relationship with social outcomes. Social outcomes in this case are a broad range of social interactions and while aggression is one of them, violence is not.

There’s a large gap between aggression and violence. Aggression can be expressed in speech, exercise, vigorous walking, maybe even some aggressive baking – Get over here pancake! Sure, it could also be expressed in violence, but only if that is a person’s normal mechanism for handling aggressive feelings.

A Canadian study from Brock University in St. Catharines, Ont. determined that the boost to aggression after playing a violent video game lasted for only short periods of time directly after the game was played. It also said that it may not be the violence in a game causing these aggressive tendencies. It could be the competitiveness of the game, the pace of action within the game, or even its difficulty.

I know the 100th time I died in Dark Souls, a notoriously difficult computer game, I was ready to express some aggression. Or when I was killed by another player in one of the many massively multiplayer online role-playing games I have tackled over the years. I can also say that I have had the same feelings with difficult puzzle games, where the only violence is often me smacking my head after I realized the answer had been staring me in the face for the last 30 minutes of play time.

I have seen video games cause destructive levels of frustration, often to the angered persons keyboard or controller, but physical violence towards another human being is a farce in a long line of them. Next, we will be told that Dungeons & Dragons was orchestrated by the Devil, climate change is not real, large quantities of sugar is good for us and the earth is flat.